International Mysteries

If you haven’t been able to travel lately as much as you wish, maybe an international mystery is what you’re looking for.

Learning about a new location or culture is one of the joys of reading fiction. Whether it is living in a foreign country, another region of the US, or in a time past or future, watching the characters interact an international mystery is a great way to become immerse in another world.

That is why police procedurals and spy novels are so popular. We want to know how the people involved in those professions interact and go about their daily lives.

There are two ways novelists can do this. They can have their characters visit other countries like James Bond. In his earlier movies, it amazed

me at the places where he ended up, whether in the jungles of Jamaica, the baccarat tables of Monaco, or the back streets of Japan. I worried about how James would get back to England. And then, at the most critical time, one of the locals would pop up and reveal that they were also an agent.

I recently read All the Devils Are Here by Louise Penny.  (Get link here.) Her hero, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, from the Surete of Quebec, travels to Paris to see his family and gets involved when someone assaults his family. She takes her reader to the streets of Paris

The other way is when the author sets the story in the different country with characters native to the area. And thankfully, we are seeing this happening more and more. We are also seeing more publishers willing to translate stories into English that we would have earlier never encountered.

Paul French, who often writes over on CrimeReads, has been instrumental in bringing many of these stories to our attention. Recently, he had a post on the 100th edition of their “Crime and the City.” (You can get the link here.) On it, they talk about crime fiction in different parts of the world, from Russia to Scandinavia to South America.

Recently, CrimeReads had a post where they interviewed several African crime writers about their books. (You can get the link here.) They write about people in Botswana, Zimbabwe, and others. It is interesting to see how the people of other countries look at their police and authorities and how they work.

I hope all of you have a super 2022 and successfully find a new favorite mystery or author. And if you get the itch to travel but can’t during this Covid time, maybe curling up with a book in a new city will help relieve the itch. And it’ll be cheaper than an airline ticket.